Trio's The N-Word investigates the history of America's most ambiguous racial slur.

The N-Word, a documentary by Todd Williams that premieres July 4 at 9 p.m. ET on the Trio network, opens with a striking montage in which the word "nigger," one of the most loaded sounds in the American language, is uttered over and over again, in tones ranging from affection to hatred, by everyone from The Jeffersons' Sherman Helmsley to rap entrepreneur Russell Simmons to a hooded Ku Klux Klansman. The strategy: to bring us face to face with our culture's ambivalent relation to the word through sheer exposure to it. A song by the spoken-word group the Watts Prophets repeats the word until it slowly transforms into "a gun, a gun, a gun." We hear Samuel L. Jackson, his voice dripping with irony, reading out such Oxford English Dictionary definitions as "nigger jockey" ("a gentleman that trades in niggers"), "nigger-stick" ("an officer's baton"), and "nigger heaven" ("the top gallery of a movie theater.") Yet later, Jackson embraces the use of the term in his own personal lexicon, announcing proudly: "I'm an actor, I'm a nice guy, but the first thing you need to know about me is I'm a nigger."

A clip from a Chris Rock standup routine outlines the debate about the word among African-Americans: "There's like a civil war going on among black people, and there's two sides: black people and niggers." Rock goes on to conclude that "the niggers have got to go," but many of The N-Word's interviewees would disagree, insisting, for example, on the key difference between the racial slur ("nigger") and the hip-hop endearment ("nigga"). At times, the controversy about the N-word appears to divide along lines of generation or class: Actor and rapper Ice Cube scoffs at the idea of "some bourgie black man or woman telling us we shouldn't use the word because of its history." But just as suddenly, another rapper of Cube's generation makes the opposite argument. Chuck D. of Public Enemy (who will also be serving as guest programmer  on Trio this week) questions the efficacy of hip-hop attempts to re-appropriate the term: "Black people didn't invent 'nigger.' It was thrown at us, and us accepting it is like someone just catching garbage and lovin' it."

"No one could use the word more beautifully than Richard Pryor," observes Whoopi Goldberg, amid a series of moving tributes to Pryor's huge influence among black artists. ("He is poet, he is genius, he is storyteller, he is language, he is everything," observes playwright George Wolfe.) But The N-Word's emotional centerpiece has to be the anecdotes in which interviewees recall their own first experience with the word. Harvard professor Alvin Poussaint recounts how, at the age of 9, he was sent to a convalescent facility for children with rheumatic fever. As the only black child there, he was teased so mercilessly he finally went crying to the head nurse, saying, "The other kids are calling me a nigger." After a  pause, she replied, "Well, aren't you a nigger?" Before you catch the fireworks displays this Fourth of July, take an hour to check out this smart and lively discussion of America's most explosive word. 1:35 p.m

Wednesday, June 30, 2004

Dull Eye for the Drab Guy

Last night, Bravo's Queer Eye for the Straight Guy paid tribute to Gay Pride Week by staging its first-ever makeover of a gay man. Wayne H. is a living refutation of the show's founding premise that love for one's own sex brings with it an inborn sense of style and wit: He may be as queer as a three-dollar bill, but before Queer Eye got to him, he was every bit as pasty, leaden, and charmless as your basic frat boy. One friend describes the décor of Wayne's fifth-floor walkup as "dorm room meets 'blah'." His wardrobe, left over from an earlier, heavier period in his life, runs toward saggy black T-shirts and pleated Dockers. More depressingly, Wayne has no apparent interest in anyone or anything: He hasn't been on a date in four years, hasn't left New York City in 15, hasn't been on a bicycle in as many as 20. He lives on hot dogs and grilled cheese sandwiches, reading comic books and watching pro wrestling. In short, he's a big gay dud: in theory, the perfect target for the shock-and-awe tactics of the Fab Five.

For some strange reason, though, last night's was one of the dullest QEs yet (and the season started off so well with the "twins" episode!). Without the frisson of forbidden sexual attraction that sparks the boys' interactions with their usual straight subjects, the show drags, and Wayne's apathetic cluelessness becomes a source, not of affectionate ribbing, but of barely disguised irritation. In theory, of course, the flirting ante should have been upped, given that there was some chance Wayne might actually respond to the boys' advances. But instead of showering Wayne with double-entendre compliments, the Fabs kept a polite distance, and the concept of getting lucky remained strictly abstract. At one point in last night's show, Wayne receives a bicycle as a gift from Kyan, the grooming guy (shouldn't that have been a job for Jai, the chronically underemployed "culture" consultant?). As the two cycle through Hudson River Park, Kyan muses: "Wouldn't this be fun to do with a boy?" The subtext: it's not fun yet; you're not what I would call a "boy"; and in your dreams, pumpkin.

Since the show's basic gag is that the boys treat straight men as if they were gay anyway, not much is different this time around: there's the horror at empty refrigerators, the cooing over new outfits (Wayne gets a paisley shirt and a belt engraved with the word "Daddy"), the supervised piping of goat cheese into stuffed-date hors-d'oeuvres. (The fact that usually-witty food guy Ted Allen blows his chance to make a "stuffed date" joke is evidence enough that it's an off night.) As always, Carson Kressley, the wardrobe maven, gets off the best dirty lines: "This shirt says pickle smoker, in a good way." (Why you would take fashion advice from someone wearing ripped white jeans, a brown shirt open to the waist, and a rosary is another question entirely, but such is the ineffable charm of Carson.) Arguably, the ideal gay subject for a QE makeover might have been an ultra-fag, someone so stereotypically effeminate that the boys would have to toughen him up a little. Half the fun of the show is watching the straight subject slowly come around to his own form of gay pride—by the end of the hour, most men are near tears, clinging to the Fab Five's necks like shipwreck victims to their rescuers. The dour, uptight Wayne seems too self-absorbed to give the boys due props—and in his show-closing monologue at an open mic, he even neglects to thank them by name!

Wayne does emerge a little sharper at the end of the hour, though he ignores pleas to shave his mini-goatee: "Definitely get rid of the man-gina." (Does anyone on Queer Eye get to keep their facial hair?) And Jai Rodriguez gives his first-ever piece of advice worth jotting down: "Sometimes you've got to leave the house to be in the mood to have a good time." I'll remember that next time I'm feeling too lazy to socialize during prime time. But not next Tuesday, when Queer Eye is calling in a poker champion to help overhaul a retired cop's weekly card game. I'm definitely staying in for that one. 4:02 p.m

Monday, June 28, 2004